


All's Well With Unwell Ends

by Ankaret



Category: Upstart Crow (BBC)
Genre: Gen, Screenplay/Script Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 07:52:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7213987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert Greene sees his chance to bring down Will Shakespeare for good, when the Earl of Oxford claims to be the true author of Shakespeare's plays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All's Well With Unwell Ends

SCENE ONE

Scene: ROBERT GREENE'S LODGINGS. ROBERT GREENE is pacing about the room MUTTERING TO HIMSELF in UNSAVOURY FASHION. Enter a Cloaked Figure.

GREENE: How now, Mistress Hardslap, 'tis not your usual night to come from Lucy's Tavern to work exquisite torments upon my buttocktons and stimulate my Bolingbroke. 

The CLOAKED FIGURE throws off the cloak in DRAMATIC FASHION and is revealed to be a gentleman in RAFFISH FRENCHIFIED FINERY. He is played by MATHEW BAYNTON. 

MATHEW BAYNTON: Why, Master Greene, do you not recognise me? I am no strumpet, but Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, recently returned from my exile on the Continent. 

GREENE BOWS, EFFACES HIMSELF and WAVES HIS ARMS ABOUT while GURNING in the manner of a SECOND RATE PSYCHIC MEDIUM attempting to expel some pesky ECTOPLASM. 

GREENE: My lord Earl! Why, it seems only yesterday that you were expelled from Court, for that you did _expel_ at Court with a most frightful windiness and in her Majesty's noble presence, too. 

OXFORD flings himself into a chair and POUTS. 

GREENE: And how have you been occupying your exile, my lord Earl? Taking the continental _airs_ , I dare say… 

OXFORD draws his rapier MENACINGLY. He is looking a bit UNHINGED, in that way that MATHEW BAYNTON does by OPENING HIS EYES VERY WIDE. 

GREENE: Nay, nay, good Earl, what I should say is, that you seem most well and also fashionably dressed, for your _pantaloons_ are so excessively _puffy_ … 

OXFORD: As a matter of fact I have been writing plays. 

GREENE: Oh, what joy indeed for pestilent London Town, to have bestowed upon it such _jewelled droppings_ from the pen of one of truly noble blood. May I enquire the titles of some of your plays, so that I may instantly put them before the Queen that they may earn the honour they deserve? For to tell you the truth, my lord Earl, there have been many carles and hindlings recently who toss aside the work of Cambridge men such as ourselves in order to glut themselves on the snivellings of a mere _Stratford bumsnot._

OXFORD leaps upon the table, leaps down again, kisses the surprised GREENE smackingly on the lips and starts dancing around the room. 

OXFORD: What plays have I written? Gloriana's ruff, my good fellow, what plays have I _not_ written? Thomas of Woodstock! A Yorkshire Tragedy! Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay! 

GREENE (cringingly): I believe Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay was one of mine. 

OXFORD: Oh, not that one, then. But all the others! Edmund Ironside! Love's Labour's Lost! Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester! 

GREENE: Wait a moment… said you Love's Labour's Lost? 

OXFORD leaps back onto the table, does some HIP THRUSTS, tosses up a pear from a nearby fruitbowl and catches it on the point of his rapier. 

OXFORD: Definitely me. And all four sequels. Love's Labour's Won, Love's Labour's Lost Again, Love's Labour's Somewhere Down The Back Of The Settle and I Swear I Saw Love's Labours Here A Minute Ago. 

GREENE: Ah, my lord Earl, mayhap I have heard more of thy golden words, conveyed here unto humble England by the nourishing French _winds_ … nay, nay, good sir, I quote only thy own words, from, if I am not mistook, your play of Henry the Fifth? 

OXFORD nods smugly and makes a little _c'est moi_ gesture of fluffing up his enormous RUFF. 

GREENE: Along with, let me dare say it, Henry the Sixth parts one, two, and three… 

OXFORD: Don't forget two and a half and three and three-quarters. 

GREENE: Indeed, who could forget't? And yet there are surely more… forsooth, did you not write the tragedy of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and also The Comedy Of Errors? 

OXFORD: Dashed 'em all off in an afternoon. 

GREENE (aside): Now does the Wednesday of my discontent turn glorious Friday with this son of Oxford! I shall declare Will Shakespeare a forger, and he will be clapt in prison and hanged, for all will believe the word of an Earl, and none those of a mere grammar-school bottom-burper. 

OXFORD menaces GREENE with his rapier. 

OXFORD: What spoke you, sirrah, of bottom-burpers? 

GREENE: Why naught, sir, naught at all. Now let us go, and you may show me the manuscripts of all your theatrical triumphs. But… if I may humbly offer advice to one of such noble stock… why, mayhap you should not bruit so loud of Fair Em, The Miller's Daughter of Manchester. 

OXFORD: Why not? That's one of my better ones. 

GREENE: But none will believe that such an exalted person as the Earl of Oxford could write of such _dungy doings_ as millers, or yet Manchester. 

OXFORD: When you put it like that, I see your point. 

EXIT OXFORD and GREENE, arm in arm. 

SCENE TWO

Scene: WILL'S LONDON LODGINGS. WILL is scratching his head with a quill pen. KATE is looking WORRIED and SYMPATHETIC. BOTTOM is NOT. 

WILL: Od's bodkins, I do fear I shall never finish this play of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

BOTTOM: Don't, then, master. No one will mind, I promise. 

WILL: Ah me! Though I have received the sum of four pence from a fellow in the employ of the Veronese Ambassador to promote the country as a tourist destination, yet my that which beateth but is not a drum, that which hath two chambers and yet is not Parliament, and that which pumpeth but is not a husband and wife between the bedsheets… ah me! my that thing I spoke of is _not in it._

KATE: Why master, what _is_ that you spoke of? 

BOTTOM (wearily) : His heart, Kate, he means his heart. 

KATE : Master Shakespeare, have you thought of making one of the gentlemen of Verona a _lady_ of Verona? 

WILL: Nay, that will not do, for in a _clever device_ the heroine dresses in boys' clothes… 

BOTTOM: And a smaller pair of coconuts. 

WILL: To search for her lover, and why a'pox would a girl dress as a boy to woo another girl? 

KATE: Now you put it like that, it does seem a bit mad, master. 

BOTTOM: Well, I'm off to fetch a pie and a pint for nuncheon, master. 

WILL: Oh, yes, and bring me some Italian sweetmeats also, that they may put me in mind of Verona. 

BOTTOM: Oh, did you want a nuncheon too? 

Enter KIT, in a HURRY. KATE SIMPERS. 

KIT: Don't have time to explain! Heard through secret agent sources that Greene is on his way! Now Will, remember, you must deny that you wrote all your plays! 

WILL: Now look here, Kit, I'm willing to write you a play now and again, but expecting me to hand over my entire _oeuvre_ is completely beyond the… 

Enter GREENE. 

GREENE: Ha-ha! 

WILL: And a good morrow to you, Master Greene, why come ye here with a heap of playbooks in your hand and a look of mad triumph in those which have lashes and are yet not the strumpet Mistress Hardslap, sit astride a nose and are yet not the strumpet Mistress Hardslap, and may be covered twice in flesh from different directions and yet are not… 

BOTTOM (on the way out of the door): He means your eyes, Master Greene. 

GREENE: Will Shakespeare, do you swear before these witnesses that you are the author of these plays? 

GREENE shakes the playbooks menacingly. KIT makes frantic head-shaking gestures at WILL. 

WILL: By God I will – indeed, 'tis my will to declare myself Will, and until the day I write my Will, I, Will, shall so declare it. I say, that's rather good. I must put it in a sonnet. 

GREENE: Then you are by your own testimony declared a forger, for all these works are those of the Earl of Oxford. 

KIT: What, Edward Windy-Pops de Vere, the maddest man at Court? Old Blow-Out-The-Back-Of-My-Breeches Oxford, who so offended the Queen's Majesty with his excessive farting that she banished him to the Continent where he might go about pooting in peace among the German sausage-eaters and other such well-known flatulentionists? 

GREENE: The very same. 

KIT: But Greene, my dear fellow, you can't trust a word he says. He's as mad as a cart with no reins that is pulled by no horses. He told me he was the author of _Tamburlaine_ , and I know for certain I wrote that one. 

WILL: Well, actually… 

KIT makes a finger-across-throat gesture. WILL subsides in irate silence. 

GREENE: Ha ha! And since he is an Earl, and therefore has such standing at Court that only the Queen herself can condemn him, you have no choice but to hang! 

WILL: Well, that is a downer and no mistake. I had hoped at least to finish this play of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

GREENE : There is no need, the Earl of Oxford already wrote it. 

KATE peers over his shoulder 

KATE: Isn't that the manuscript of Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester? 

GREENE: Certainly not. Will Shakespeare, come with me to the Tower. 

Enter BOTTOM. 

BOTTOM: Why, master, gentles all, have you heard the news from Court? 

WILL: What use have I for news from Court, Bottom, when I am about to be hauled away and hanged as a forger for the crime of writing my own plays. 

GREENE (gloatingly) The Earl of Oxford's plays. 

BOTTOM: But masters, 'tis news I bring of the Earl of Oxford. He has been banished from Court again, because in the presence of the Queen he declared himself to be her own bastard bumling, and further cried that the Earl of Southampton was his child got on his own mother, and that in between these carrion couplings our Gloriana's majesty had borne many more children including the poetess Mary Sidney… 

KATE clasps her hands. 

KATE: I love her. 

BOTTOM: And for this insult the Queen hath banished him beyond the borders of the realm. 

GREENE (reeling) For that insult? 

BOTTOM: And also that he did follow through in her presence most grievously in his puffy pants, good master. 

KIT makes a rather-him-than-me face. 

SCENE THREE

Scene: STRATFORD. WILL and ANNE are contentedly puffing pipes by the fire.

WILL: And thus it hap'd that the Earl of Oxford was bustled hence before the Queen decided to change her mind and chop his head off, and the suit against me is quashed by his absence. 

ANNE: And now everyone knows you wrote all those plays. 

WILL: Indeed they do, good wife. 

ANNE: Mind you, it's a shame you didn't write Fair Em, The Miller's Daughter Of Manchester. I could properly hold my head high around town if everyone knew my husband wrote that one. 

WILL: Mayhap, dear wife, one day I will write a play even better than Fair Em, The Miller's Daughter Of Manchester. 

ANNE leans her head on WILL's shoulder. 

ANNE: How about Fair Anne, The Dairyman's Daughter of Stratford? 

WILL: Hmm, bit niche in its appeal. But I could always put in a secondary plot with merry goings-on at Court and some fart jokes. 

ANNE: Everyone likes a fart joke. You could call it All's Well With Unwell Ends, or something like that. 

WILL: Hmm, no, doesn't sound like my kind of thing, I'll probably give it to Kit. 

ANNE: As you like it, my darling.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Charles Beauclerk's _Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom_ , which advances the theory that Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays and also that he was Queen Elizabeth's illegitimate son and incestuous lover.


End file.
